Under Fire

In the year 2023, when this year's seniors return for their 25th reunion and recall the glory days of their Harvard experience, the diversity of background, culture, opinion and upbringing distributed among their peers will be foremost in their minds. Diversity is the apotheosis of today's Harvard experience--nay, of today's educational experience.

But in the courts of law and public opinion, the opponents of affirmative action and diversity are winning a battle against these programs. Our nation's institutions of higher learning are being stripped bare of the diversity that makes the college experience so rich. Minority representation at the University of California at Berkeley fell from 23.1 percent in 1997 to 10.4 percent in 1998. The Los Angeles campus saw similar declines, despite having more minority applicants with strong academic credentials than in previous years.

Affirmative action has not been without its problems: The racial divisions and separate standards used have been problematic and at times shameful. However, the principles stand.

What is to be done? First, the justifications for diversity and affirmative action must be clarified, publicized and affirmed. The traditional defense of diversity efforts--one that once held up in court though now has only questionable standing--is utilitarian. "Diversity is not an end in itself, or a pleasant but dispensable accessory. It is the substance from which much human learning, understanding and wisdom derive. It offers one of the most powerful ways of creating the intellectual energy and robustness that lead to greater knowledge," Neil L. Rudenstine wrote in his 1996 President's Report.

Legally potent, this argument is often flaunted in higher education, for the moral justification of diversity lacks the popularity it once held, but this rationale is still important. Colleges and universities are gateways to elite society. Education is the key that grants one access to privilege, to standing, to power. Universities therefore have a moral obligation to swing wide their doors and extend to those who have historically been missing from this elite an opportunity to change this situation.

We applaud our peers at Harvard and at more than 70 other colleges and universities who rallied on the Day of Action to preserve affirmative action. Further, we urge Rudenstine to continue to use (and use more) his bully pulpit, explaining the defense for affirmative action in a way that only a well-respected member of the academy can. All affirmative action efforts must also start earlier in Head Start, elementary, junior high and high school. More resources must be put to basic education and motivation, teacher salaries and basic supplies.

If we do not, the anti-affirmative action hailstorm will continue to roll on, downing more and more centers of higher learning with them. "I sort of feel the nation is asleep [on this issue], and the consequences will be deep, profound, terrible and long-lasting," Rudenstine said. We must all wake up, or we will return in 2023 to find Harvard a very barren place. Though Harvard's diversity system is not the same as the affirmative action system of the University of California, it can still be affected by a national change in policies.